the persons who built them, and even concerning the use and
object for which they were erected. No traditions hang round the ruins
of Greece and Rome; the temples of Paestum, lost until within the last
half century, have no traditions to identify their builders; the "holy
city" has only weak inventions of modern monks. But for written
records, Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman remains would be as mysterious as
the ruins of America; and to come down to later times and countries
comparatively familiar, tradition sheds no light upon the round towers
of Ireland, and the ruins of Stonehenge stand on Salisbury plain
without a tradition to carry us back to the age or nation of their
builders.

The second argument I shall notice is, that a people possessing the
power, art, and skill to erect such cities, never could have fallen so
low as the miserable Indians who now linger about their ruins. To this,
too, it might be sufficient to answer that their present condition is
the natural and inevitable consequence of the same ruthless policy
which laid the axe at the root of all ancient recollections, and cut
off forever all traditionary knowledge. But waiving this ground, the
pages of written history are burdened with changes in national
character quite equal to that here exhibited. And again, leaving
entirely out of the question all the analogous examples which might be
drawn from those pages, we have close at hand, and under our very eyes,
an illustration in point. The Indians who inhabit that country now are
not more changed than their Spanish masters. Whether debased, and but
little above the grade of brutes, as it was the policy of the Spaniards
to represent them, or not, we know that at the time of the conquest
they were at least proud, fierce, and warlike, and poured out their
blood like water to save their inheritance from the grasp of strangers.
Crushed, humbled, and bowed down as they are now by generations of
bitter servitude, even yet they are not more changed than the
descendants of those terrible Spaniards who invaded and conquered their
country. In both, all traces of the daring and warlike character of
their ancestors are entirely gone. The change is radical, in feelings
and instincts, inborn and transmitted, in a measure, with the blood;
and in contemplating this change in the Indian, the loss of mere
mechanical skill and art seems comparatively nothing; in fact, these
perish of themselves, when, as in the case of the I